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2015 Public Media News Salaries

In the last few months, quite a few folks around pub-media-land have asked me if there is any updated data on salaries in public media newsrooms.

I wish there was. If you know of any fresh surveys, let me know.

What I can offer is an adjusted take from our 2010 data, accounting for inflation. (The U.S. government estimates the inflation rate between 2010 and 2015 to be just under 10%. So, if you were hiring a News Director for $50K in 2010, you should now be hiring at around $55K, just to keep up with inflation.)

In the following three charts, the data is sorted by news budget size. You may recall from the 2010 survey (in which Steve Martin, Ken Mills and I questioned more than 300 station managers about their local newsroom staffing and programming), that the most significant variable in salary data was the news budget itself. This was more telling than such factors as station type (radio, TV or Joint), or licensee (community, university), or even market size.

In the 2010 report, I used a data visualization technique to indicate the sample size for each column of data. The sample size is good to know, of course, because a sample size of 30 is a much stronger index than a sample of 2. I didn’t do that technique here, but below are tables indicating the number of stations that provided the salary data for each job title (per each chart). Remember, this isn’t the number of people in those jobs, it’s the number of stations reporting their salary for that job title.

BDGTS >$750K+

# STATIONS REPORTING

VP of News

11

Content Director

9

News Director

18

Executive Producer

26

Public Affairs Director

6

Senior Producer

23

Managing Editor

12

Online Editor

9

Assistant News Director

5

Bureau Chief

4

Producer

33

Web Producer

12

Host/Anchor

30

Reporter

32

Photographer/Videographer

17

Correspondent

2

BDGTS $250-750K

# STATIONS REPORTING

VP of News

4

Content Director

10

Executive Producer

16

News Director

36

Public Affairs Director

5

Senior Producer

15

Managing Editor

6

Online Editor

6

Assistant News Director

7

Bureau Chief

8

Producer

23

Web Producer

13

Host/Anchor

28

Reporter

35

Photographer/Videographer

11

Correspondent

2

BDGT $50-250K

# STATIONS REPORTING

VP of News

5

Content Director

6

Executive Producer

11

News Director

80

Public Affairs Director

6

Senior Producer

12

Managing Editor

3

Online Editor

4

Assistant News Director

9

Bureau Chief

2

Producer

33

Web Producer

8

Host/Anchor

40

Reporter

53

Photographer/Videographer

9

Correspondent

1

Finally, we’d all agree that much has changed in #pubmedia between 2010 and 2015, so this adjusted estimate of salaries does not provide a snapshot of what’s actually going on out there. Many stations have been investing in local news and may have changed budget categories, or increased salaries, or — as we know — have begun creating entirely new jobs to manage digital projects and audience engagement.

If anyone wants to talk about a more refined look at this data, let me know. Better yet, if anyone wants to sponsor a fresh salary survey, I’m game for that, too!

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Michael V. Marcotte

Hi, I'm the (first-ever) Professor of Practice in Journalism at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I teach multimedia journalism and launched are innovation/collaboration lab: New Mexico News Port. Previously, I was the 2012-2013 Reynolds Chair in Ethics of Entrepreneurial and Innovative Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno... and, before that, a 2011 Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. I'm also very active as a consultant in public media news, having spent over 20 years as a news director. My website is http://www.mikemarcotte.com or on Twitter: http://twitter.com/michvinmar
View all posts by Michael V. Marcotte